Also most of greatest nations in Earth's history were tall more than they were wide. The wealthiest, most advanced nations are tall while the widest nations are mostly third world nations full of poverty and backwardness.
Wanted to refute this as it's categorically untrue and also myopic in its scope.
Historically, large tall empires were vastly more advanced, rich, or politically relevant compared to smaller neighbors which had to bend in certain respects to these empires or their rivals.
Take the Roman Empire, the Rashidun Caliphate, the Han and Tang Dynasties and many more relevant polities across many different time periods.
Even if you look in the modern era, the United States dominates in all sectors and it doesn't look "tall" to me.
People look at small countries being richer or more advanced than larger ones and it's largely a modern conceit created through the aftermath of WWII with de-colonization and globalization.
It's a phase that will pass, at least in terms of wealth. What hasn't changed is that in every period of time, every relevant power in its respective landscape has been "wide".
With the British Empire and Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan in WWII, or the United States and the USSR in the Cold War, or even now, with ascendant China and India, it's all been wide.
Off the top of my head, it's been wide since Egypt and the Hittite Empire with the Battle of Kadesh as an early example of large powers controlling the destinies of small entities around them,
and probably with even more examples before that.
Wide polities dominate and set the tone for the political landscape in all of history.
The problem with tall over wide is always the question of:
1. No incentive to expand leading to empty land late game
2. If a small country can have powerful cities it seems gamebreaking and weird that a large country cant also have powerful cities
3. Historically, small countries actually are usually weak. They become strong actually through becoming wide just not using military conquering direclty. Like medieval vatican city, swiss banking, french art and plenty othees that held a heavy influence over others.
Fundamentally, yeah, that's wrong in a game where one of the primary focuses of the game is to expand. If I had to apply bonuses for designing a tall playstyle, it certainly wouldn't be to make their cities better just by slapping on a Research penalty with successive cities. It would make more sense to tackle the landscape, like say if your empire has fewer than six cities, it would impose more penalties on AI/players DoWing you. On an OCC, or if you're only maybe 2 or 3 cities tall, the other AIs could conceivably be likely to dogpile your aggressor or come to your aid at a lower cost. Conceivably as a player-only benefit because too much turtling to avoid getting dogpiled when you are trying to pick off small civs yourself would dampen the action. (Addressing player psychology on active avoidance of penalties; see razing all cities but the capital in Civ5).
in history, was diffusion, such as that simulated by the mechanic of lowering research times for those civs that haven't researched the tech in question yet, and by science points on trade routes. Almost none of the advances in the tech tree of humanity were independently developed by anyone, just one good idea that caught on and spread over time.
